The Russian President has accused members of the non-parliamentary opposition of betraying national interests, and likened them to Bolsheviks who wanted a Russian defeat in WWI.

President Vladimir Putin was talking to young activists on the
last day of the Seliger political forum on Friday and, among other
issues, discussed Russia’s current political system.He stressed
that in his view the country had a fully-fledged multi-party
political system and added that recent elections prove his point.

“Parliamentary opposition parties can work really hard at
elections when they feel they have a real chance. Let us look at
the 2012 campaign – were they really playing to lose? Of course,
not,” Putin told the forum.

Putin said recent political reform had drastically liberalized
the registration of new political groups, and because of it the
number of officially registered parties in Russia now exceeds 70.
At the same time, he defended the system of restrictions on
political elections saying that the excessive number of
candidates would make voting harder.

Vladimir Putin accused a part of the non-parliamentary opposition
of “rocking the country” and warned of the possible dire
consequences of such behavior.

“The Bolsheviks openly wished their motherland be defeated in
the First World War. When heroic soldiers and officers were
shedding blood at the fronts of WWI some people were rocking
Russia from the inside and this rocking caused the country to
engineer its own defeat. It was a nonsense, a delirium, but it
did happen. It was a betrayal of national interests,” Putin
told the young activists.

“Such people exist in our country today. Unfortunately no
society can do without them,” the President added.

In May this year the VTSIOM agency conducted an all-Russian
opinion poll that showed that the broad public remained
uninformed and skeptical about the party system in the country,
the recent reforms, and the activities of the political
opposition.

Sixty-four percent of respondents said the current number of
political parties in the country was sufficient. Thirty-five
percent replied that there was no party that could represent
their interests, and 39 percent of Russians said they did not
understand what political parties were for.